As for tobaccos, satisfaction has been more elusive. There are several blends I have grown fond of over the years, yet it is much more difficult for me to find satisfaction in
tobaccos than it is for pipes. I'm relatively satisfied with my pipe collection as it is. I add one to it every now and then, often to commemorate a special occasion. My wife bought me a pipe of my choosing for Christmas last year in Grapevine. I just bought my most recent pipe at a fabulous pipe shop in Mill Valley, CA while we were on vacation. If I never bought another pipe, I would be quite happy with what I have. Yet tobacco is a consumable. It disappears over time and has to be replaced.The plethora of choices of different tobaccos is overwhelming. And considering that you might spend $15-20 for a 50g tin of quality tobacco, you don't necessarily want to be buying something you won't like after one or two bowls. Yet experimentation is the only way to discover a future favorite.
One of the first things you discover is the complexity of pipe tobacco. The first level of appreciation of a tobacco is how it is in the pouch or tin. How it smells, how it looks. Then there’s how it performs in the bowl. How it burns, how it tastes, how it smells as it’s burning. The aroma a tobacco creates as it’s burning is called its “room note”.
Every fact about pipes, tobacco and pipe smoking has its believers and skeptics. For example, I posted a response to a thread on alt.smokers.pipes about moisturizing bulk tobaccos. I mentioned that I had my bulk tobaccos stored in bail-lid jars, the kind with the rubber gasket to make it air tight. I also mentioned that I keep the tobacco at optimal moisture by putting a slice of apple in the jar with the tobacco. The moisture from the apple moisturizes the tobacco over time, and the apple eventually ends up looking like a leathery piece of mummy skin. Another fellow responded to my post, stating that this would make mold grow on the tobacco. I could have responded with a treatise on the biology of molds and spores and how they are generally unrelated to apple slices. I could have also brought real evidence into play, mentioning that this had been my preferred method of tobacco storage for years and that I had never seen the first sign of mold. Instead, I just let it drop.
Taking this disparity of opinion into account, there are many different "genres" of pipe tobacco, and many differing opinions as to what is good, what is bad, and what is a little of both. Some love English blends--the stronger the Latakia the better. Some exclusively smoke aromatics--the sweeter the blend, the sweeter the smoke. Some would sooner smoke sawdust than the bulk blends from brick-and-mortar tobacco shops. Others swear by these same blends, knowing no other tobacco than that which comes from a big glass jar or a Ziploc baggie.
One of the most peculiar things about pipe smoking is how I, as the smoker, can’t discern the room note whilst I am smoking. I could smell tobaccos that others might be smoking, assuming I wasn’t smoking the same thing, but I couldn’t smell my own tobacco as it burns. Strange. Another peculiarity is how tobaccos taste. They rarely taste like they smell. For me, this is fine. I just have to enjoy the tobacco on two different, unrelated levels.
(Pictured: My most recent pipe acquisition, a Stanwell Nordic #254; also below, some of the tinned tobaccos I'd recommend--Blue Note, MacBarens' Vanilla Cream, and G. L. Pease's Haddo's Delight and Piccadilly [the only English blend I've ever liked]. My source for most of the tinned tobaccos I've smoked is cupojoes.com. I also bought my Peterson Aran 80S there.)
(To be continued.)
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